


my teeth are smooth and one day will be yellow

by not_the_idle



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Complete, Pining, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25530850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_the_idle/pseuds/not_the_idle
Summary: “You don’t know how long I’ve waited for you”Edward's been waiting for Bella since 1918. But his waiting can't be fully captured with the passage of time. To know his waiting means to know how he longs for her heart, her hair, her mind, her scent. To know that he yearns for her during every quiet moment.He's been so patient. And his patience may earn him a peek at future joy.
Relationships: Edward Cullen/Bella Swan
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	my teeth are smooth and one day will be yellow

  
  
  


Tubes of toothpaste litter the top of my piano. Alice, Rosalie, Carlisle- whoever keeps leaving these suggestions thinks they’re untraceable. They think the act is so casual that it will slip out of their mind. And in doing so, render them safe should I decide to search their thoughts. To the rest of my family, these ivory keys look like teeth stained yellow from a hard life. A life only made bearable by chain smoking and coffee drinking. They see me as neglectful for not cleaning them. I know better. These keys are alive. They grew inside a tusk, part of a living being. They’re yellowing and chipping like they’re supposed to; like they have the spark of life within them. My own teeth never dull, never discolor. They’re far from alive. Sweeping my fingers over these keys, I feel the texture slow my hand. My teeth are forever smooth, nothing of the world sticks to them. But the ivory has texture, it traps pieces of the world it encounters. I close my eyes as I touch them, willing myself to take in their life.  
  
Inside my mind, I hear the piano’s staccato notes. How each note begins with a punch and slowly fades into silence. The pitches vary and each fade builds my anticipation for the next tone. But I lose focus as I hear mechanical noise. It’s coming from the world I’m trying to shut out. First, I hear a soft clang, quiet enough to ignore. Then the clangs rise, quicker and louder. It sounds almost like music. But music corrupted, like it’s coming from a bastard child of my piano and a tangled ball of wires.  
  
Opening my eyes, I yell “Where is that coming from?”  
  
Before I can adjust to the light, Alice pops up in front of me. Forever too close, no matter how many times I remind her about boundaries.  
  
“Isn’t it fantastic?” she says. Today marks the 263rd day she’s wearing all black. She’s obsessed with her Doc Martens, chunky belt, and floppy hair bow. All of it is too much. It’s 1983 — 7 more years until this decade ends. I’ll be so glad when it’s over. How I miss the swing skirts and kitten heels she wore a couple decades ago. I hope she will return to that soon.  
  
“If by fantastic you mean awful, then my answer is yes.” I say, “But tell me, what exactly is it?” I pause, then speak again before she can respond. “Wait, if you’ve purchased the Lisa Apple Mary Chopsticks (whatever it’s named) computer thing that you’ve been talking about, then I don’t want to know. Because if I know, you’ll want to show me how to use it. But if I don’t know, I can continue on with my existence free of cyber intrusion.”  
  
“It’s not a computer, silly. Though I will be getting one and showing you how to use it. You are going to love it and get one too, I’ve seen it.” she says.  
  
“Doubtful.”  
  
“Of course you are. You’re so predictable. But I’m not here to talk about how fantastic the Lisa computer will be and how much you’ll love it. I want you to see my new synthesizer!”  
  
“Your new what?”  
  
“Synthesizer. It’s a kind of electronic keyboard.”  
  
“Ok I have the answer to my question now,” I say. “I am not interested anymore. Run along and leave me to enjoy a real keyboard.” For a split second, I think she’s complying. She disappears from in front of me and I see a blur speeding up the stairs. But a moment later, she’s standing well within my personal space again holding a long, flat machine.  
  
“You can enjoy both!” she says, “Look, I don’t have to tear you away from your keyboard to show you mine.” She sits on the floor, crosses her legs, and places the machine in front of her. Before beginning, she looks at me and smiles.  
  
“Guess who I am?” she says. Then knits her brows and stretches her fingers like long legged spiders. She coughs twice, the same cough I habitually make before I play. Closing her eyes, she glides her fingers across the plastic array of black and white. She sways her head back and forth, a graceful motion set in stark contrast to the keyboard’s electronic thuds. The caricature is me, obviously. But very overdone. This continues for a minute, then Alice can’t keep a straight face any longer. She breaks her impression and giggles.  
  
“Any guesses on who I am?” she says.  
  
“You’re insufferable.” I reply.  
  
“Wrong, I’m you!”  
  
“Hilarious.” I say, making sure to keep my face still and voice deadpan.  
  
Alice ignores my context, choosing instead to take me at my word. “I know right? So funny!”  
  
I stare at her until the silence creates awkward tension.  
  
“Well, as fun as this has been…” I say “I’m going to retire to my chambers.”  
  
At this, Alice stands and laughs.  
  
“Yes, I will curtsy good day to you sir,” she says with a high-pitched fake accent. Since she’s wearing acid wash black jeans, she has to mime the curtsy. “I give you leave to further wander about the moors.”  
  
It’s my time to take her solely at her word. “We’re in the middle of snow country, no moors in sight. Though I am in the mood for a novel with a gothic heroine and her Byronic love; a story of them wandering the moors together. Thank you for the suggestion.”  
  
“You outdo yourself sometimes. When I get my computer, I’m going to change its programming to respond to any typed sentence with the most dramatic and self-indulgent reply possible. Of course, I’ll have to change the computer’s name from Lisa to Edward since it’s you in machine form.”  
  
“I’m surprised you haven’t seen your future in standup comedy yet. With you being so hilarious and all.” I say. Before she can reply, I push the piano bench out from under me and head to my room.  
Finally alone and with a closed door, I have some peace. My bedroom’s walls are hidden beneath continuous, ceiling-high bronze bookshelves. The royal bronze is a bit out of step with the rest of my wooden furniture, but I want to always have a piece of my favorite library with me. Some years ago, I visited the Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading in Rio de Janiero. I felt an instant communion with the destination’s soul. With its bronze book shelves endless as true knowledge is endless. It was then that I noticed the tiniest flicker of warmth inside my chest. It froze me much colder than the ice of my skin. That flicker was what I used to feel all the time before I was turned— the warmth of being alive. I thought my humanity was dead— I was sure it was dead, all of it. But this library’s soul awakened the tiniest hint of life within me. The Cabinet of Reading, and all of Brazil, it’s sacred-— I’m sure of it. Brazil is full of a loneliness and loving warmth that I cannot understand. I’m drawn to it, but come up short trying to explain why.  
  
So, while I’m here in snow country, I recreate the bronze shelves and fill them with my books. I’m sure Alice will find a way to use her unnatural machines to trap stories inside screens. But, for me, ink on paper is perfection. I never understood why others in my family don’t value books the way I do. Except Carlisle, he understands. Books exist in a timeless space, as close a timeless space I’ve found to the one I am forever stuck in. Stories in books seem real and lifelike during the reading. But their glamor distracts you from the truth; that stories aren’t alive. They don’t change, they don’t sleep, they don’t die. They’re a world apart from the world that breathes. They’re in the unbreathing world and they’re in it with me. My father understands and can join me here. But an undead father and son can’t fill a whole world. It’s still empty, even if you add in all the books that were and all the books that ever will be. The love between father and son may be strong, the stories in books can have their own power, but it’s not enough. The world apart needs the love of real lovers to be truly complete.  
  
Though books and I share the same space, we aren’t the same. There’s joy in a novel’s timeless pages that can’t be found within my empty shell. Inside of paper and ink, characters are free to bask in love’s glow. When I’m reading, in these quiet moments, I free my hidden hope. I wonder what human right now is reading these joyful lines along with me? If we’re feeling similarly about the same thing, can we make a connection? I desperately wish the answer could be yes. I want to feel close to a girl reading along with me. If I concentrate hard enough maybe I can make it true. I imagine this girl, her hair as brown as my human father’s chestnut desk. All the brilliant lawyering he ever did, he did it while sitting at that desk. I see her long hair falling over a bony shoulder. I see her skin pale as a vampire’s, but with cheeks pink as cherry blossoms. I imagine her eyes as chocolate brown and try to meet their gaze. I let go of the awareness of my bedroom. If I can just focus, I can hold myself here in this connected space. And with my focus and this connection, I will have enough to let all of my loneliness go. But the longer I hold myself here, the more I become aware of how artificial it is, this thing I’m trying to create. There is no brown haired, pale girl reading along with me. At least right now. I am emotionally connected to nothing except the smell of the book in front of me. I need to accept the loneliness that will be ever present in my life and find small ways to enjoy myself.  
  
Smell, including the smell of books, is one of those ways. A few decades ago, I created my own scent. When Alice and I took a trip to England, I found a perfume bottle exactly like the one my mother owned. It’d been so long since I’d seen a bottle with a vintage atomizer. You squeeze it, rather than push a modern pump, to release the scent. So much more graceful. But I didn’t touch the bottle for years, afraid that one clumsy moment would shatter the glass. I believed it to be delicate in proportion to its elegance. But its delicacy also commanded my energy— how beautiful to be so fragile.  
When I was ready to finally use the bottle, I traveled to South Africa to gather the finest freesia and to the lavender fields of France for fresh flowers. I made my own perfume and applied it to a few books. It’s not that I tired of book smell, it’s that I wanted all the smells I love to join together. I chose first to mist _Wuthering Heights_. The aroma of books, freesia, and lavender as one— it was as intoxicating as the heroin Thomas De Quincey describes in _Confessions of an English Opium Eater_. Forget imaginary connections, this is where my focus should be now. On this smell. On the joy I can realistically bring into my life.  
  
When I was human, I was less bothered by my life’s limitations. I knew that even if the daytime left me feeling trapped, that I was still free at night. I could sleep and experience Caliban’s truth— to dream of beauty such that when I wake, I cry to dream again. I didn’t properly value it at the time. But now, the world of sleep is cut off to me. And such is my heart that I’m forever attracted to what I can’t have. Attracted, so I keep wanting. Keep wishing for sleep and dreams, sleep and dreams, more sleep and dreams. I try to get close— reading _Alice in Wonderland_ , listening to “Après Un Rêve”. But it’s not the same. How I dream of sleep and dreams. My bookshelves hold more than a few books with images of restful sleep. I flip through them and remember the rise and fall of a dreamer’s chest. Then I raise my own chest, just to feel it fall. There’s a small pleasure in that. Dreamers, fast asleep, can’t sense this fall. But I can. I can watch it. There’s that at least.  
  
But noise interrupts my deliberate breaths. I’m hearing thoughts as loud as speech coming from outside my door.

_Go away Alice, I’ve locked myself in the bedroom for a good reason. To experience pure loneliness. By myself. Don’t talk to me, I’m crying._

More impressions of me, fantastic. I hope next decade, in addition to giving up her exclusively black wardrobe, she’ll also give up this shoddy comedy. I want to be less in tune with her thoughts. She has so many; they invade my mind and multiply. They’re tumors— sometimes malignant, like ruptured egg sacs. Sometimes lovely, like bound together flowers. But altogether too much.  
  
It’d be nice to turn my ability off sometimes. To experience the mindfulness that comes from absolute mental silence. How peaceful it would be to sit next to someone and not hear their thoughts. To experience their presence without constant access to their jumbled mind.

_I’m Edward. Alice’s impressions are a weight on my burdened soul. I’m forever cursed with a fallen destiny. I must always live in suffering and not hang out with people or do fun stuff..._

Practice is only making her teasing worse. For a moment, I think it’s over. I hear the soft noise of her feet as she leaves.  
  
But then I hear her synthesizer. She’s at my door again.  
  
“Edward, I’m protesting via synthesizer until you come hang out with me. I need your help coloring my hair,” she says. Of course she’s playing the instrument at full volume. I can’t stand it. With all of my speed, I transport myself inside of her personal space. Let’s see how she likes it.  
  
“Bitchin’!” she responds, unconcerned with how close I am to her. “I’ll put the synth away… for now. Ok so, I want my hair to be bright pink. Your hands will probably be stained for a bit, which is why everyone else is refusing to help. But since you’re the best brother ever, I knew you’d be willing to do it.”  
  
Great. Something tells me that pink tinted hands means pink tinted books. Or pink tinted piano. I don’t like this. But I don’t see what other choice I have. Alice has discovered the power of the synthesizer and I’m at her mercy. Since Jasper and Emmett are occupying the living room, she leads me to the music room. We sit on the piano bench together and she details her hair dye strategy.  
  
“First I need to change so the dye won’t stain my nice shirt. You should too, just in case. I don’t want to ruin your clothes. Then we need some towels. I think there are extra towels in the upstairs closet that no one will miss…” she says.  
  
But I’m not listening. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice the piano. It looks different. I turn my head to examine it more closely. The keys are untouched, still perfectly yellow and chipped. But the toothpaste is gone and everything else has been cleaned. It seems the unwanted gift giver finally got the hint and threw the tubes away. I run my hands across the piano’s clean top. It’s as smooth as my teeth.  
  
Wait, here’s a bump. The mystery cleaner missed something. It feels like a small rock. I palm the stone and bring it close to my face. It’s a tiny diamond fashioned into the shape of a heart. Alice watches as I examine the gem. Like me, it will never dull or discolor. Like me, it has no texture. But unlike me, its heart is on prominent display.  
  
I become distracted as Alice closes her eyes. She’s having a vision. It’s an image. An image so saturated that it’s louder than any voice. I try to take the vision in.

_It’s me, sitting at this same bench. But I’m not in snow country. I’m somewhere else. A place where glass windows frame mossy trees under a sheet of rain. I notice my flawless skin, unchanged. It’s effortless to see that skin, to follow it across my face. I begin playing the piano and smile when I reach the song’s bridge. The wide smile shows my mouth, my venom’s home. The part of me that kills human warmth. But this smile also shows my teeth. Smooth, still. But they’re like a humans, ever so slightly yellow._  
  
The vision’s colors are now fading. I’m frantic. I want to know why my teeth match the ivory. But I can’t stop the fade. Before it washes completely, I catch sight of the heart shaped diamond dangling on a slight, pale wrist. 

Alice opens her eyes and picks up where she left off. She’s talking about timed rinses and pink, pink, pink. I’m half-listening. I feel my teeth with my tongue and wonder when I’ll feel their texture.


End file.
